The Lebanese Prisoner Exchange

One of the "ground rules" for this Israel blog, from our Gratz College professor, was to write about matters of interest other than the political situation between Israel and its Mideast neighbors. Today I’m going to break that rule. The exchange last week of five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of two hundred Lebanese fighters for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in 2006 demands to be written and spoken about. It says a lot about the character of Israel, of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and of the Middle East situation in general.

Last Thursday, July 17, two pictures were published side-by-side in The Wall Street Journal. I hope they were published together in many other papers. In one photo, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is standing next to Karnit Goldwasser, the widow of one of the dead Israeli soldiers. Their heads are bowed, their foreheads are touching, their faces show infinite sadness and each of them has a hand on Ehud Goldwasser’s coffin.

In the other photo, a smiling Samir Kuntar, one of the five Lebanese men who were released, is standing in uniform next to Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, who is also smiling. Kuntar, who received a hero’s welcome, took an Israeli family hostage in 1979, shot and killed the father, crushed the skull of his 4-year old daughter and indirectly caused the death of the family’s 2-year old daughter when her mother accidentally suffocated her while trying to keep her quiet. An Israeli policeman was also killed in the incident. Some of us have seen photos of a banner in southern Lebanon which said “Israel is shedding tears of pain. Lebanon is shedding tears of joy.”

Many of us remember the Achille Lauro incident in 1985. Bret Stephens wrote, in The Wall Street Journal, that the Palestinian terrorists, who killed Leon Klinghoffer, by pushing him overboard in his wheelchair, seized the ship intending to trade for Kuntar’s release. I've heard, on Fox News, that Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, congratulated Kuntar on his release.

Many people, inside and outside Israel, have criticized the Israeli government for making this exchange. They say that the government should have known that the two soldiers were dead and that Israel gave up too much for their bodies. They say that a terrorist like Kuntar shouldn’t have been released to kill again. They say that Hezbollah, Hamas and other enemies will be emboldened by Israel’s appearance of weakness. They say that Corporal Gilad Shalit, still held by Hamas, might not be released alive and that the price that Israel will have to pay for his return, dead or alive, has now gone up.

Rabbi Donniel Hartman replied that Israel must do whatever it can to bring its children home, dead or alive. He has written that this exchange and the future exchange for Corporal Shalit are not only necessary but critically important for Israel. Our tradition teaches that one human life has infinite value. Therefore, Rabbi Hartman says, there is no such thing as a disproportionate payment. He says that Israel should welcome the opportunity to express the value that it places on one human life, that the infinite value of every life makes every prisoner exchange, regardless of the numerical ratio, a bargain from a Jewish perspective.

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, an American who now lives in Israel, has written that if this exchange was a mistake, it was a mistake worth making. It gave the soldiers a decent burial and their families some closure and the opportunity to move on, no matter how painful that will be. He likens the exchange to the withdrawal from Gaza, which he also calls a mistake that Israel needed to make. Rabbi Gordis says that the withdrawal from Gaza proved, once and for all, that Israel’s enemies have no interest in a state of their own, that they only want to destroy Israel. He says that Israel needs to recognize that peace with its enemies isn’t possible in the foreseeable future. He says that Israel’s war with the Palestinians can’t be won and that Israel needs to learn how to live and even to flourish in a state of perpetual war.

Is Rabbi Gordis being unduly pessimistic? I wish that I could think so. Please see my next entry for some further thoughts and suggestions about what we in America can do to help.